Earlier this week, we celebrated the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. At this moment, everyone is eager. Eager to leave the house, eager to get to the gym, eager to get back to work. In other words, there is an eagerness to get back to the grind of “business as usual”. Rather than rush to try and put things back just as there were, which in truth might not be possible. We should be asking ourselves how we can change our ways and to make a lasting positive impact on the world and each other instead of just using up the planet as we have been doing each day. We should be figuring out how to make every day an earth day.
This existing crisis is a wakeup call. It caught almost all of the world unprepared. Shelter in place affords us time to prepare for other impending global disasters such as climate change. Leaders are emerging in the trying time, and those who listen and communicate well have been vital to our ability to adapt and thrive. Just as it’s imperative for leadership to listen to medical and health experts in our current crisis, it will be imperative for our leaders to listen to experts about the dangers of climate change and sea level rise before the impending environmental collapse occurs. We need to be prepared.
There are many lessons we can learn from nature. Perhaps one of the most important is resiliency. Here are links to just a few examples from here and around the globe illustrating how nature capitalizes on opportunity and makes the most of a situation: Coyotes on the streets of San Francisco, sheep eating grass outside a McDonald’s in Wales, baby leatherback sea turtles thriving due to COVID-19 beach restrictions in Thailand, and clean air in Los Angeles, notorious for its pollution.
So many good things await us when we emerge from the shelter in place in the coming weeks. Here are some ways to continue to make a positive impact going forward.
Greening and stewarding local land: Planting native plants in your garden or patio space provides many benefits like saving water, decreased yard maintenance, and supports local ecology. Once established, California native plants need minimal irrigation beyond normal rainfall. Native plants have evolved over thousands of years, adapting to the changing climate and local soil conditions. Preserving the integrity of local ecology can give endless rewards to us and to the wildlife our urban landscape may have displaced.
Reducing consumption and conserving resources: As we shelter in place and become “experts” at working and learning remotely, our modified lifestyle works to reduce our carbon impact on the Earth. Decreased work commutes reduce your carbon footprint by one pound for every mile you do not drive. Buying local and conservatively reduces distance from farm to fork and by reducing your meat consumption curbs carbon emissions from the livestock industry. Although shelter in place will end, our impact on the environment will continue. By adopting these consumption resolutions post-COVID, we can mitigate our impact on the Earth while supporting ecosystem services, biodiversity, access to fresh water, food security, and improved livelihoods for future generations.
Growing food to support good health: Growing your own food has many health benefits. Gardening encourages you to eat more fresh fruits and vegetables; it gives you the agency to decide what kinds of fertilizers and pesticides come in contact with the food; and it lets you control when to harvest food. With an investment in time, basic kitchen staples like tomatoes, lettuce, peppers are easy to grow and can be very forgiving to fledgling gardeners. Additionally, vegetables that ripen in the garden have more nutrients than most store-bought vegetables that are often picked early, AND gardeners have a chance to learn about the weather and other environmental factors that impact your crops that may not have been relevant to them before.
LEJ collaborates with the Bayview Hunters Point community to increase the resiliency of our environment. In the coming weeks, LEJ will be sharing news about our long-awaited nursery/ garden expansion and offer a preview of the long term impacts the project will have on local jobs, biodiversity, eco-literacy, food justice and community healing space.